Stories Never Told – 4.

“A callus on my left heel”

  Replacement depot, ghostlike men wandering aimlessly, gray faces painted against green, mud-splashed tents, spectral eyes peering through dust raised by miniature cyclonic winds. How can they have survived Okinawa’s holocaust? What they must think of him and other replacements! Pimply faced recruits, but now they’re here, we can go home again.

  Close up to them in the chow line, he sees longing in their eyes, as if hoping to recapture visions of times vaguely remembered. They can’t be more than a year or two older than he is, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two. A first lieutenant shuffles in front of him, eyes old, straining to be young again. Dana wants to give him something he can hang on to—something real. “Nothing’s changed much in the states,” he says, “we’ve got rationing still.”

  The lieutenant’s not listening. “A tall glass of cold milk when I get home,” he says, “that’s all I want—a big fat cheeseburger with lots of onions and pickles and a tall cold glass of milk.“

  Later, perched on a grassy incline as far as possible from urinal pipes stuck in the ground, Dana imagines the men dreaming how it was to be sixteen or seventeen, Friday night high school dances after football games, racing hot-rods; necking in rumble seats with sweet-scented girls, warm autumn Saturdays watering the lawn, college football games on the radio, aroma of crackling bacon and eggs frying in the kitchen, flapjacks in the skillet; puffs of clouds in Okinawa skies transformed to fair-weather clouds after  a summer storm, silently floating over Iowa’s corn fields, hawks circling October glow of crimson maples in Vermont—the fervent desire to expunge forever nightmares of the ravished land, scarred and blackened hills, dead bodies of a nameless enemy bulldozed by cherry pickers into grisly mounds; monuments of rusted tanks scattered on hillsides

  He wants to shout to them, You’re still less than twenty-five and have a life ahead of you! You survived and that’s enough.

  Only four months after the fight for Okinawa ended, he and a few hundred other guys from the Eberle waded ashore, fumbling out of landing craft, no rifles held over their heads—stuffed duffel bags replacing them, sliding into gentle, knee-high surf, mocking the beachhead. It’s the fifth of November, seven months after Easter Sunday, April first, when the first waves of fighting men began to struggle ashore at 8:30 in the morning on this same Hagushi beach. Supporting fire from battleships offshore ceasing only minutes before; artillery’s distant rumble signaling continuing naval bombardment aimed at targets farther inland.

  In the first hour, sixteen thousand troops make it ashore without casualties: Sixth and First Marine Divisions abreast of the Bishi River; Seventh and Ninety-sixth Infantry Divisions, south of the river. Waves of tanks follow, the entire landing accomplished with no enemy in sight, no enemy artillery fire. Spirits soar as Marines and Infantry push up hillsides behind the beaches to find dry land dotted with green stubby pines and small concrete bunkers.

  All too soon they’ll discover the bunkers are burial tombs used for something far more deadly, but after this initial landing, the feeling of many is told by an infantryman of the Seventh Division, “I’ve already lived longer than I thought I would.”

  A small convoy of mud-splattered half-ton trucks wait to shuttle Dana and the others to the replacement depot. Bouncing along deep-rutted roads, jolted incessantly, he sees a downed plane, its weathered American insignia, five-pointed star on fractured wings, tail section thrust into the sky, nose buried in mud, wondering if the pilot survived. Barren hillsides are clustered with burnt stumps, leafless trees, lifeless tanks, blackened concrete bunkers; a persistent, acrid smell, like burning rubber.

  The corporal driving them stares ahead, silently. He’s seen it all before, steeling himself against the memory of flame throwers igniting enemy soldiers as they stumble from burial tombs and caves, shrieking tanks rumbling into battle, planes falling from the sky; men given to madness, stumbling up hillsides pockmarked with fox holes, thunderous artillery ripping craters into the earth—the nightmare of a shattered comrade’s blood exploding in fire storms.

  He’s surprised to get orders to join a port company in the destroyed city of Naha, Okinawa’s capital, it’s harbor in shambles forcing more than a hundred ships to wait in anchor deep water to unload cargo which made it to the island as the war ended—jeeps, crates of weapons and ammunition, clothing and food supplies and resalable stuff for P.X.s, the cargo finding transient rest in supply dumps, courtesy of the Transportation Corps.

  Destiny mocks him. Is he at last going down to the sea in ships? His first real adventure at sea had been only two weeks ago, October 23, 1945, sailing into a golden sunset from Seattle through SanJuan De Fuca Straits on the troop ship U.S.S. Eberle, manned by the Coast Guard. Alone on the afterdeck, breathing in the smell of the sea from a fresh salty wind out of the northwest, reminding him of Frank Hagaman in the sixth grade reciting John Masefield’s poem, “Sea Fever,” I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky. . . it’s pitch dark—a mandatory blackout, isolated Japanese sub crews might think the war’s still on.

  A struck match violates the darkness. Afraid he’ll be discovered, he ducks behind a thick, steel mast. Two Coast Guardsmen lighting up, cupping hands to hide the glow of cigarettes. He expects whispering, lascivious braggadocio will follow, stories of sexual conquests in Seattle, prostitutes older than your mother, barroom brawls. But no—nothing like that—startled to hear a quiet, young voice with laid-on gruffness say, “It’s good to be at sea again.” Dana trembles, but it’s not from the cold.

  “Yes, the only place to be.”

  “How was Seattle for you?”

  “Not so hot.”

  Longer silence now, cigarettes glowing, smoke exhaled into the wind. Then, almost inaudibly, a gruff voice again, “Great to be at sea again, the only place I ever wanna be,” the men sharing a thing remembered from childhood dreams perhaps, Down to the sea in ships with Frank, and Tommy, sailing forever around the world

  Laughter now, piercing the dark night. “Better get below before we’re caught up on report,” stripping down cigarette butts, stuffing them in pockets. As they vanish into the night, Dana wonders—are they embracing? He’d like to think so.

  Alone, feeling that old familiar, irrepressible warmth in his belly, goose bumps prickling the back of his neck. Great to be at sea again, the only place to be. He wants to follow them, curl up with them in bunks telling stories of the sea, and all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over. He’s reminded of his ship-building ancestors. For the sea is in the heart of me, as it was with generations long before, sailing around the world, fishing for cod far beyond Casco Bay, north to the Bay of Fundy.

  The Eberle’s voyage, certainly not around the world, is plotted on a huge bulletin board, but destination remains secret—it will not be to Hawaii, that much is known. Crossing the Pacific is an adventure nevertheless, bright days in rough seas, standing at the ship’s rail fighting the elements, Oh mighty and wide Pacific! salt spray lashing his face, huge valleys of turquoise green, raging foam threatening to engulf the ship, deck tilting upward just in time as the gigantic turbulence readies to swallow them up. In the upward swing, all he can see is clear blue sky, spray stinging his hands and face, the ship continuing to careen, deck sinking, then rising. Man the mizzen-mast! but there’s no such cry, rather a rowdy voice hawking from the bridge over a loudspeaker.

  “Lieutenant, this is the first mate. Get your ass off the deck at once!” He wants to shout back, I’ll stay here forever! It’s  the only place I ever want to be! Doesn’t the first mate realize there are no portholes in the mess hall? You can’t see the role of the ship there—only feel it; sure to get you running to the head to upchuck your lunch.

  Down to the sea in ships. Monday after Pearl Harbor most of the boys in  high school longed to join the Navy—a desire to revenge the “Day of Infamy,” for Dana and classmates, fueled by the death of alumnus Wallace Mitchell, one of the first casualties from Franklin High aboard the Battleship Missouri, headlined in The Franklin Press. Wally’s sister Marjorie collapses in tears in the art appreciation class cloak room. They cluster around, trying in vain to dampen her sorrow.

  Or is it a romantic dream, not revenge—a desire to be with guys, together clinging? An impossible dream. He’s only fifteen and his mother refuses to help him lie about his age. In the Highland Park library he finds a thick blue-covered Naval Manual filled with all kinds of good stuff. Wash your hands in cold water in the morning. Cold water toughens the hands, a habit he’ll carry with him the rest of his life. Devouring bunches of raw carrots to make sure his eyes will test at 20/20, until his dad tells him, “Your skin is turning yellow!”

  In line at Jefferson Barracks induction center in St. Louis, two officers, one Army, one Navy, sit behind a small table, stacks of physical reports laid out in front of them. As Dana approaches, the Naval officer looks up, smiling—it’s the Navy for sure! Studying the report, a frown crosses the officer’s brow. “Eyes, less than twenty-twenty, he’s yours.”  H will be a footslogger in the infantry.

  Assigned to the port company, destiny nudges him, although ships he and a crew board will remain at anchor—not one of them will sail off into the sunset. The port company’s headquarters building is housed in one of several large corrugated aluminum Quonsets, one of them with fifty or so Puerto Rican blacks, a smaller Quonset serving as mess hall and movie theatre.

  In its infinite lack of wisdom, the War Department has assigned First Lieutenant Springer from Atlanta, Georgia, company commander, a short, soft and chubby, turnip-face who calls the men “niggers.” Dana is appalled and tells him so. Springer taunts —“Typical Yankee point of view” asking him if he would like a set of Transportation Corps insignia to wear on his lapels, knowing full well that men in other armed services have dubbed Transportation Corps’ insignia “the wheel of shame,” unjustly—the Transportation Corps has distinguished itself in all theatres of war. Dana. however, is proud of the Infantry crossed rifles on his lapels, and refuses to replace them.

  The port company’s Executive Officer, First Lieutenant Patrick Coan, a happy face, thick curly haired Irishman from Boston, encourages him, but never in front of Springer. “Don’t’ worry,” he says, “you’ll make out okay. Depend on the men—they know their job and won’t let you down.”

  Coan is right—Dana finds himself in capable hands. The men know everything there is to know about unloading cargo and before long, he’s calling for “dunnage” and “cargo hooks” and “goosenecks” like a veteran stevedore boss in San Pedro. The Puerto Ricans are a wild bunch with tangled hair, arms tattooed with large red hearts pierced by cupid’s arrow, names of girlfriends. The first sergeant, Hermes Garcia, seldom wears his stripes aboard ship. “My father was pure white Spanish and my mother, pure black African. Lots a’ mixtures like that in Puerto Rico—and Cuba, but Cubans don’t like to admit it.”

  Most of the time on Victory or Liberty ships, often taking several days to unload cargo, the crew sleeps on deck; Dana in a cabin usually on the bridge near the captain’s quarters. Springer’s inevitable complaint—the crews should finish a job in a day or two, not three or four, and certainly not five. but Springer doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. He never ventures on board the ships

  Dana plays chess with a Liberty Ship’s Norwegian captain who seems to have materialized from a Joseph Conrad novel—fulsome pepper-and-salt moustache and beard, eyes sunk below furrowed brow—eyes that have seen storms, Dana is disappointed he doesn’t spin sea yarns through the long night as Joseph Conrad’s Marlowe did. Only an occasional growl from the captain, “It’s your move, Lieutenant.”

  Boarding a Navy cargo vessel, Dana is told by a young and crisp ship’s captain, “Your crew cannot spend an overnight on my ship, and there’s no way of feeding them.” Dana’s heard about naval policy—even more restricted than the Army’s—black swabbies serve as kitchen orderlies and cooks. Repressing anger, Dana warns the captain, “You’ll be sitting here at least a week or more. We must stay aboard overnight if you want the job done in, at the most I’d guess, three days.”

  Shrug from the Captain. “Very well, your men may sleep on deck and they can use only the head next to the kitchen where they can pick up their meals. You’ll eat with the ensigns, but we’ve got no inside quarters for you. You’ll have to sleep on deck with your men.”

  He’s happy to be on deck, stretching out beneath the stars, jacket as pillow—time to dream a little. . . Down to the sea in ships, clear night and a good thing it is to lie under the stars with the men—not suffocating in some cloistered cabin. Here it’s steel deck for a bed, anchor chain creaking under his head, sky, diamond studded. No pup-tent canvas sheltering him, as in the infantry. Going to the rail, he looks toward shore. Barges spit black water, lights winking at the dark night. The ship rocks, the anchor chain complains, answering shadow-swells rolling beneath them. The sea I dream, the men I dream, and all that remains to remind me of the infantry is a callus on my left heel.

  Morning sun answers the hum of winches unbraiding cable, lifting pallets of cargo, booms groaning. Goosenecks pivot. First Sergeant Hermes Garcia approaches, khaki shirt unbuttoned. “Don’t let the Navy catch you with a bare chest, Sergeant,” Dana warns, “I don’t think they could handle it.” Ever efficient Hermes ignores the warning. “Need some dog hooks, Sir, cargo won’t hold with a sling.”

  Gone, gone the clipper ships, white canvas billowing in the win, tarnished, clouded childhood dreams, boys enshrined forever sailing, forever clinging, forever, around the world. . . the sea I dream, the men I dream, dueling storms, howling hurricanes.

  The dark hold parents a jeep. Jumbo arms swinging it across the deck, barely touching the rail as it’s dropped over the side into a coughing L.C.T.

  The sea I dream, the men I dream, lost worlds I dream, and all that remains to remind me of the Infantry is a callus on my left heel.

  Cargo’s unloaded the next day! that should satisfy the captain—and Springer. This is Able-Baker-Charlie! Dana proclaims into the walkie-talkie, looks like we’re through with this Sugar—coming ashore!

  His career as stevedore boss is short-lived. Springer already has given him a couple of low efficiency ratings. Then “one dark and stormy night” his fate is sealed. He’s ordered to put to sea, in spite of foul weather, “from a Sugar in deep water,” obliging him to find a barge runner who’s no more than twenty, ordering him to take out the crew. In a driving rain, sheltered beneath tarps slung in a corner of the barge, the barge bouncing like driftwood, they endure ten frightening minutes, then at last reach the hull of a Liberty ship, the barge slamming repeatedly against it. “I can’t tie up!” yells the boy. “We’re going back.”

  Called away from the weekly movie showing in the mess hall, MGM’s musical, “Weekend at the Waldorf,” Springer is livid. Certainly he can hear rain pelting the aluminum roof of the Quonset and yet he demands Dana take the crew back to the ship at once. “We can’t do it, it’s impossible to tie alongside. No way we can get aboard in this storm. Anyway, the barge runners won’t risk it. We tried, didn’t we?”

  Springer, rosebud mouth fluttering exasperation, turns on his heels and waddles back to the movie in time to hear Xavier Cugat cranking up the band for the song, “Guadalajara! Guadalajara! Guadalajara!” anything but calming. Dana tells a relieved Hermes the crew can have a good night’s sleep, unless they’d like to see the movie—“It’s Weekend at the Waldorf.” Hermes laughs. “I’ve seen it, Lieutenant, couldn’t take it again—that conchita belting out Guadalajara forever!”

  A few days later, orders for transfer are cut and Dana’s hustled off to the only fully manned infantry regiment left on the island. Springer’s face twists into a grin. “You will be free to wear your crossed rifles legitimately, Lieutenant. Of course, their men never saw combat.” (Dana wants to say, Did you?) “The Twenty-fourth Infantry are all niggers, you should feel right at home.”

  Springer is wrong. He learns the “Two-Four” has a history. One of several all-black  regiments formed after the Civil War, the Twenty-Fourth rode with all-white cavalry to capture Geronimo and fought with other black regiments, the 24^th literally, as one historian wrote, “saved Teddy Roosevelt’s ass in Cuba in the Spanish-American war in his charge up San Juan Hill.”

  Regimental enlisted personnel are housed in a series of large Quonset huts in mid-island on the eastern coastline, north and inland from the “Old Stone Castle,” the village, Nakagusuku, more hilly than the Naha area. The castle’s crumbled stones, only one impressive archway still standing, will never make it to National Geographic.

  He’s put in charge of the 24^th’s P.X. More armed services logic—he’s studied German and French in college and they sent him to the Pacific, so why not to Okinawa to manage a P.X.? Fortunately, once again, two proficient enlisted men are in charge. Gangly Tech Sergeant Washington from Mississippi, not much flesh gracing his lanky bones, probably in his late twenties, mild mannered, languid, mothering sort of guy, patiently teaching him, this is how it’s done, unwinding instructions with a drawl. Sergeant Washington is definitely in charge. One of his endearing activities—peeking between curtains from his sleeping quarters in the P.X., looking out for shoplifters.

  Sergeant Duffy from Passaic, New Jersey, quiet, never sullen, as one might expect from a big city boy finding himself in this white-overseered regiment, wears army cap askew, doesn’t talk much; nor does he seem at all impressed by this “Great White Father” Second Lieutenant. Dana tries to reach out to him, asking him about schools, his family, life in Passaic before the war. Duffy answers tersely—“Never knew my father. . . School was okay, got my diploma.” Dana gives up trying to connect with him, thinking he must sound like a pompous ass! (at the time, “patronizing” is a word unknown to him), but he continues making the effort to be one of the guys, pitching in to unload crates of merchandise from the trucks, wondering if its contents have reached them courtesy of Sergeant Hermes Garcia and crew, yet hoping Garcia and former comrades at sea, by now have been mustered out, and are on their way home.

  Early each morning, except Sundays, native girls roll into the regiment, standing in the open bed of a two-ton truck, white kerchiefs tied around brown faces. Kiki and Suzuki are assigned to his barracks which houses about a dozen officers. They’re paid to make beds and wash clothes in newly acquired “automatic washing machines” installed behind the Colonel’s quarters. Suzuki, city girl from Naha, is the prettier one, flirting with him and other lieutenants, smiling and rolling her eyes, and he wonders how he should respond and might be expected by his white officer comrades to take Suzuki to bed. He has no desire to do so—making the excuse (more to himself than to them) she might have some disease and besides, fraternization with the natives isn’t allowed.

  Kiki short, stout, shapeless, dumpy little girl with sad eyes, offers no such sexual challenge. In broken English, she tells him she lives in Taekusu, a village just north of the 24th’s encampment where they sleep in mud huts crammed close to each other along a narrow, dusty road to keep surrounding land free so they can scratch an existence from it, growing sweet potatoes and sugar cane. Before the war Kiki had lived in Shuri, migrating to Taekusu as the war cut a swathe of destruction down through Naha and the southern tip of the island. Separated from her mother, father, and younger sister, she doesn’t know if they’re still alive.

  She sings in haunting five-note scale,  explaining to him it’s about a sister who has lost a brother in the war, but “he’ll come home one day.” Naku-nai, imotoyo—Don’t cry, little sister. . .” He commits it to memory. In 1964 he will sing it over a backyard barbecue to four young artists from Kyoto at his West Side apartment in New York. They recognize it at once—correcting his pronunciation. In 1971, staying with a Japanese boy from Hawaii for a few weeks in a large home in the hills above Laguna Beach, he hears the song again—Toshi has a recording of it. “It’s a country song,” he says.

  It’s a miracle Kiki has survived. Eighty thousand civilians, nearly half of them wounded, had crawled from caves at the southern tip of the island in the last two weeks of June, 1945:  children, women and the very old, a few able-bodied men among them, trudging north in long columns, most of the women carrying babies on their backs; bundles of clothing, food, dishes, and kettles on their heads. Chewing stalks of sugar cane when they can find it, keeps most of them alive, but bodies of many thousands are found scattered in ditches and cane fields, in the rubble of villages, or sealed in burial caves.

  Like the song, Kiki tells him her only brother joined the Japanese army many months before the first artillery shells whistled across the Shuri hills. She hopes he’s still alive. As with many Okinawans, her family could trace ancestry to Southern China. In the 1920s, Okinawans had migrated to South America, bringing back words still used, like casa and hasta la vista.

  Sundays are lonely, although he’s not alone, exploring the island with Lieutenants Dino, Ken, and Charlie, the three of them as skinny as he is, not much more than 145 pounds, each of them bored stiff with the occupation—eager to get home. Dino, the photographer, snaps pictures of them standing together amidst the ruins of the “stones of Naka.” Where’s his club house with Tommy Buchanan hidden among California live oaks on Mount Washington? No Campus Theatre here, lifting Nanci Jepson to pin silver stars on a blue  scrim . . No Myra Kinch to beguile him. There’s got to be something more. . . friendships, being close to someone—perhaps when he gets back to school. . .

  One Sunday the four of them jeep down to the southern end of the island to look around what’s called “Suicide Cliff,” a name which suggests how the last days of the battle ended—Japanese soldiers and civilians rushing to the edge of rocky cliffs, jumping into the sea. But walking down the slopes, they stumble onto Japanese skeletons littering the ground, blackened caves sealed by flame throwers. The remains can’t be American; American dead have long been buried in large fields beneath white crosses. Remnants there are, and certainly Japanese. Empty foxholes everywhere, the ground littered with unmistakable, G.I. issue, rusted forks,  dented canteens.

  This was no “glory build-up” from a war movie—Americans triumphantly raising a flag, Japanese in shredded uniforms hurtling themselves off the cliffs into the sea. Reaching the reverse slopes of “Hill 89” he and his buddies find a black-lettered placard stuck in the ground: “Here sealed within this rock is the last command post of General Ushijima who committed suicide with General Cho, June 21st, 1945. This his last stand.” (Two months to the day when I got my commission at Fort Benning, Dana muses, August 21.)

  They couldn’t know what actually happened here. No history had been written and as in the replacement depot, those who survived didn’t want to talk about it. Here the Japanese 32nd Infantry attacked up the lower east end of the slope and across the broad, flat top of the hill, finally retreating into a series of caves; Ushijima’s cave, facing the sea. As the Americans reached Hill 89, a Japanese officer volunteered to deliver an offer of surrender but as the Americans gathered near the opening, the Japanese blasted it from inside, sealing it forever.

  Many Japanese soldiers did retreat to the water’s edge. Some leaped into the sea, but most of them hid among boulders at the foot of the cliff, or in caves in its face. There were no mass suicides. Below, close to shore, a small landing craft idled, shouting appeals in Japanese over a loud speaker, “CEASE RESISTANCE!” On the slopes, frightened Japanese were urged by one of their own, an army sergeant, to surrender: “Leave your hiding places! Follow the coast north to the American lines.” As a result, almost seventy-five thousand Japanese soldiers surrendered to Tenth Army troops.

  Dino is busy with his camera. Dana stands in the rubble looking out over a calm ocean thinking of fresh salty breezes in California where he learned to swim as a boy, nothing like the persistent, stinging smells of Okinawa. Scrubby pine trees remind him of a trip up the California coast in the early spring of 1938 to “Cambria Pines by the Sea” where stepfather Robert Taylor had bought a piece of land which turned out to be on the side of a steep hill he couldn’t build on. The trip introduced him to the smells of pastures in Salinas Valley, soil freshly plowed, lemony aroma of eucalyptus trees, California’s rolling golden hills wildly adorned with tall grass—nothing like Okinawa’s reeking, smoky bouquet.

  Not all surviving Japanese have surrendered. Cavalry First Lieutenant Mark Buchoz from Detroit, after transferring from the Philippines to the 24^th, is put in charge of a small detachment of previously “rescued” Japanese prisoners to entice their comrades out of caves, mostly in the northern part of the island. Amazed, Dana watches him miraculously prodding his rescued charges, many of them taller than he is—Mark, only five-feet-five—shouting orders and herding prisoners into wire fenced enclosures. They sullenly obey this short, super-charged first lieutenant, without protest.

  Mark Buchoz is manipulator, he himself admitting to this—that he’s plagued by a “Napoleon Complex” because he’s a shorty. He loves charming people, his large blue eyes sparkling beneath a head of jet black curls, thick bushy eyebrows—looking something like the leading man in “Gilda,” Glen Ford. He likes figuring out what makes people tick. Was he not a student of psychology at Michigan State College before he got drafted? Speech was his first major; no major was offered in drama or theatre because M.S.C., as he explains, is a Land Grant college. “But we have drama classes and produce plays,” an attempt to entice Dana to go to M.S.C. when he gets home, and not return to U.C.L.A.

  Their first meeting is at the officer’s club as Dana finishes reciting, drunkenly swaying, gesticulating, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”—words somewhat slurred from too many beers.

"These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with “hooch,” and I’m not denying it’s so.
Now I’m not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two—
The woman that kissed him and pinched his poke was the lady known as Lou."

  An unsteady bow to enthusiastic applause, staggering back to a large, round table, Mark sitting there with other officers, laughing and clapping. Dana “flops down there like a fool,” replaying from the poem, the miner fresh the creeks stumbling “into the din and glare.” Mark swings an arm around him. “That was terrific,” he says. “Were you an actor in another life?”

  “At U.C.L.A. for a year, but I learned  the poem from my Dad,” snorting laughter. “My dad’s version was more—well, unsocial and downright unmentionable.”

  “You mean, dirty—are we going to hear it?”

  “Never mem’rized that version, only the first few lines.”

  “Do another one. What else did your Dad teach you?”

  “The Face on the Barroom Floor. Casey at the Bat—learned that one myself. I’m drunk—can’t do anymore—”

  “Nonsense!” Mark commands, grabbing his arm and yanking him to his feet.

  They become inseparable, roaming the countryside when they can get a Jeep from the motor pool. Dana teaches himself to drive, crunching gears, down-shifting up and over hills and rocky terrain. No women to divert them. It appears all female nurses have gone home, or are holed up in remote island enclaves like Japanese survivors.

  One afternoon, Mark, almost skipping into his barracks from a “rescue mission” says, “I’m going down to Naha to visit a fellow classmate from Michigan State. He’s announcer for Armed Forces Radio at OBASCOM. But we’ve got to take him a quart of Four Roses or Scotch. I’ll get a bottle from the medical officers.”

  Sergeant Arnold Gregson is much too burly a man to be sitting in such a crowded booth, and seems quite at home, resonating with deep bass “radio” voice into the microphone, followed promptly by the engineer spinning a recording of Glen Miller’s cool saxophones—“Tuxedo Junction,” the Miller band sparking intoxicating trumpets. Mark passes a quart of Four Roses, “Dana writes poetry, why not let him read one on the air?”

  “Why not?” says moon-faced Gregson. “Whatcha got?”

  Dana thinks, drunk as he may be, that he’s not about to say, It just so happens I brought one with me; but instead extracting, silently, a battered hard cover journal from his knapsack, flipping pages, managing to inhale deeply, rumbling overcharged decibels into the mike, announcing, “The poem is called Oriental Tapestry,” a startled engineer quickly turning knobs to bring down the volume.

  “Back away from the mike!” Gregson whispers.

  Slight of build, black hair shocks his forehead,
  head bent, and on his back the yolk of centuries.
  Naku-nai, don’t’ weep, lad, and he answers,
  the tears stopped long ago.
  For you, only this,
  a load of sticks on your shoulders,
  never looking at the sky,
  dust burning every labored breath.
  Typhoon rains sweep away all hopes of freedom.
  How can we lift the weight of centuries from you?
  Our victory gives you nothing in return,
  will never take you from this land
  to shining opportunities.
  We shall to west return, rediscovering
  schools and firesides, life once known, renewed,
  helpless to set you free.

“Uh-huh,” Gregson takes over, “Well, you occupiers of this barren land, how’s that for a different look at our Okinawa friends? Sorry, got no native songs to play.” (Dana almost says, I can sing one, but thinks better of it. Signaling for more Glen Miller, returning to the bottle and taking a swig, Gregson gets private with Mark, exchanging memories of M.S.C. Dana slumps into himself in a dark corner of the studio, self-conscious and sullen.

  On quiet afternoons in officers club or barracks, Mark continues regaling him with magical stories of M.S.C., Dana hanging on every word, gullible, accepting as true that M.S.C. has a large theatre with a revolving stage—a bald face lie, he will learn. Dana says, “U.C.L.A has a big stage—Royce Hall,” Mark, not listening, continuing unabated, flowered floats drifting down Red Cedar River in the May festival; Delta Sigma Phi’s chorus wearing white dinner jackets, red roses in their lapels. “We always win grand prize for our floats and men’s chorus.” Mark sings at the top of his lungs, off key, eyes watering, Here’s to old Delta Sigma Phi, here’s to the green and white here’s to old fellows who do or die here’s to old Delta Sig forever . . . Mark is tone-deaf!

  “Delta Sig’s colors are green and white, same as M.S.C. Spartans—M.S.C. we love your shadows as twilight softly falls . . . You’ll have to major in Speech to get into drama classes. Come for a visit as you soon as you get back. You can stay at the fraternity, then make up your mind if you want to join. But I’m warning you, it’ll be hard to resist. My Delta Sig brothers will love you!”

  “I might want to go back to U.C.L.A. . . Funny, isn’t it? I had a room at the Delta Sigma Phi house at U.C.L.A. just before I got drafted.”

  “We will celebrate the Fourth of July with parade and fireworks,” proclaims the regimental bulletin board. Mark will enter a float in the parade and get his “rescued” P.O.W.s to build it. They construct an enlarged M-1 rifle to exact specifications, painted silver, splattered with blue sequins; men of the Two-Four to be positioned on both sides of the flat bed, stripped to the waist, muscular upper torsos smeared with Johnson’s Baby Oil (courtesy of the P.X.), each man holding ends of white ribbons attached to the rifle; white crosses alongside them, black-lettered with names of Two-Four campaigns:

  CAPTURE OF GERONIMO. SAN JUAN HILL. . .

  At the front of the flat-bed behind the driver’s cab—who else but Abraham Lincoln in stove pipe hat—Dana transformed in beard and long black cloak, left hand extending back to the men in the tableau, struggling up the hill toward noble Abe, urging them forward! C H A R G E! The Regiment wins first prize.

  By late July, Mark has earned enough points to return home and finally get out of this Army of the United States. Their farewell—swimming together at midnight in the warm, eighty degree phosphorescent glow of Ishikawa Beach, Kwan Yin Bay. They’d discovered Ishikawa in June. A large portion of it fenced off with chicken wire to keep the natives out, but they are curious, gathering behind the chicken wire to watch the antics of the Americans. One would expect giggling children and amused adults; instead—complete silence from watchful, puzzled eyes.

  A few weeks before their “farewell” at Ishikawa, Mark acquaints himself with two entertainers, pretty young blonds who could have been brother and sister, definitely “buddies,” performing in a musical review set up in a large tent near the regiment. Mark entices them to the newly discovered Ishikawa for a swim, and a few days later, informs Dana, he’s got a date with the girl. Dana tries to convince himself, we’re just buddies after all—no need to follow Mark around like a pet dog.

  For the final swim, however, it’s just the two of them. “Guess we’re not going to meet at the Top of the Mark in ‘Frisco,” Mark burbling between dives in the warm, softly ebbing phosphorescent sea. “You must come back to Michigan State. I’ll expect you.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Several lonely months follow.

  "for I have bathed at midnight in warm seas,
  remembering Ishikawa most of all
  Kwan Yin Bay and Mark was there
  three sheets to the wind, malingering in warm seas,
  dreaming a world ten thousand miles away,
  Big Thanksgiving Football Game ,here’s to the Green and White,
  beer busts with our girls in smoky bars,
  in warm waters of Kwan Yin Bay
  dreaming a world beyond our reach,
  yet more real than phosphorescent glow of rolling tide."
. . . and now to west return . . .

  Okinawa, gray smudge on the horizon, hovers over an orange sea, soon to vanish forever. No longer to see cherry pickers bulldozing the land, Kiki and the girls at washing machines, dreaming of how it used to be on their island home. Naku-nai, imotoyo, don’t weep, little sister. . .

  In the train’s club car, carrying him down the coast, a blue-haired woman enters, regally enthroning herself in one of the plush chairs, turning her head to glare at him, just as he’s settled into a bourbon with ginger ale—too sweet—ginger ale and club-car booze, nothing like overseas with Mark downing fifths of straight bourbon, Four Roses enticed from medics.

  Perhaps remembering this will help him avoid the woman’s stare, but not so, her eyes have fixed on him. Perhaps if he simply listens to the train and sounds beneath his feet—klunk-ka-lunk-ka-lunk, riding high on the rails, feeling the vibration, the old club car soon to be mothballed like destroyers, reminding of the many coal belchers like this one he’s ridden in the last two years, chugging locomotives taking him to places he’d never been.

  Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis to the station in Little Rock. That was an unforgettable trip—at least their arrival was. Another troop train rolled in at the same time, and men began shouting at each other from the windows, Hey! Where you from?  Indiana! New Jersey! Kentucky! New York!

  Train to Ft. Benning, Georgia, rest stop in Memphis, store windows draped black—the night Roosevelt died. Neosho, Missouri to visit his mother and stepfather after graduating from Officer Candidate School, before boarding a train to Camp Hood, Texas to act the role of platoon leader. Start of the long journey to overseas, first to L.A., then up the coast through California to Camp Adair in Oregon—along the way, seeing snow-capped Mount Hood. After a month, on to Seattle.

  The blue-haired woman is still staring, cold blue eyes in a  stern face—hatless, corseted in lavender flowered dress. Again he tries to break away from her penetrating gaze, forcing himself to look out the window, straining to remember every detail from the moment two nights ago on the troop ship as Port Réyes light flickered in the distance. This woman will never know the thrill. . .

  Two other passengers are in the car—a quiet couple engrossed in each other—civilians, as expected, more than a year after Japan’s surrender—the man in navy blue suit and loosened yellow green, flowery necktie, jutting jaw and dark brown eyes, devouring a girl with taffy blonde hair swirling about a Kewpie-doll face with startling red lips.

  Why is the blue-haired woman staring at him? Reaction to his uniform, maybe—brass, second lieutenant bars pinned on the shoulders of his Eisenhower jacket, infantry crossed rifles on the lapels. He feels sick, forcing himself to look out the window, clutching at every detail. He was feeling okay until her eyes drilled into him, reminding him of things he doesn’t want to be reminded of—not now; not with all the wonderful possibilities waiting for him in civilian life.

  You’ll never find it again, her eyes tell him, a man’s world, world of men. You must find yourself a girl, get married and settle down. Ah, but she doesn’t know, does she? A whole new world waiting for him—Mark, waiting for him in Michigan.

  What could she know? two nights ago—the sheer joy as the troop ship slipped ghost-like beneath the Golden Gate bridge; the thrill of it, surrounded by shouting, cheering men. Long before they reached the bridge, he’d been alone on deck, staring out into the night to see, suddenly a distant, a flickering light invading the night, vanishing—appearing, way out at the edge of dark water, left-to-right, sweeping over the empty horizon. A boy in seaman’s pea jacket moves close to him and he’s no longer alone—a Coast Guardsman suddenly appearing out of the shadows, standing beside him. “It’s Point Reyes Light,” the boy says, his voice scratchy, breathless, almost inaudible.

  Dana shivers, moved by the flashing beacon reaching out to them. “Look!” the boy says, standing close to him in the darkness, “there it is again, it won’t be long now!”

  California’s coastline inevitably appears, a black shadow on the horizon, men beginning to crowd the deck. At last the dream looms, gliding above them, The Golden Gate, will-of-the wisp. graceful, giant span celebrated with a hundred voices filling the night. Golden Gate, it’s the Golden Gate! Home, we’re home!

  It’s too late to dock at Oakland. Next morning over speakers the troop commander, native San Franciscan, pride in his voice palpable, points out landmarks—Coit Tower, the Marina, assuring them that Alcatraz, the infamous federal prison, will be torn down before long.

  Bus ride from Oakland Army Base to the separation center in Marysville. At the bus stop, a two-bit cheeseburger and a tall glass of cold milk—his first in a year, offering a silent toast to the lieutenant at the replacement depot—All I want when I get home  is a glass of cold milk and a cheeseburger!

  Riding up through Napa valley—California’s rolling golden hills, smell of autumn. And now he’s a kid again, with Tommy Buchanan and little Johnny, sliding over straw colored wild grass clinging together on flattened cardboard boxes in the long, dry summer months in Highland Park, City of Seven Hills—before the grass has been burned black.

  Crazy encounter with Anita jumping on his lap at the Marysville dive, flaying his face with powder puff; close dancing; she’s not wearing anything beneath her black satin dress, he can feel outlines and curves of her body—flat warmth between her legs (the guys call it “her coozie”). Showing off—easy in front of the others because tomorrow they’ll separate forever from the Army of the United States. Anyway, why should I want to impress them? He won’t even remember their names.

  Hearing himself saying, “I would love to go home with you but we’re getting up early tomorrow—it’s our last day in the army.” Convinced he could take time and sleep with her if he really wanted to, but he’s never slept with a girl before—still, he ought to know what to do, not believing for a minute he doesn’t want to sleep with her—or with any girl really, making the excuse that nothing is going to divert him from his headlong flight to freedom from military life—once and for all. Tomorrow he’ll be on his way to L.A.

  He turns from the window, startled to find the blue-haired woman hasn’t given up on him. Why should this bother him? Why should it make his belly ache? Not logical. He can’t define how he feels, maybe her presence signifies he’s in some kind of danger—a threat, inexplicable. She’s judging him—her stern holier-than-thou look plunging him into dark corners filled with women harpies. She would drag him back to summers at his grandparent’s house in flat southwest L.A.—no mountains on the horizon, nothing but palm trees—dull, like his grandmother’s nonexistent passion; not like Highland Park, Bob Crimea and the gang.

  Is it because he’s got a drink in his hand? Maybe she’s lost a son in the war—an enlisted man perhaps—and so a reaction to the second lieutenant bars on his shoulders. Perhaps she resents his survival. A heavy knot of anxiety grips, Why does she make me feel this way? Near panic—why? she’s a total stranger.

  It’s his grandmother reaching out to smother him. He’s shocked into smoldering intuition—he will now and forever from this moment free himself from the bleak and cheerless worlds of sour old, crêpe-hanging women—from all women who would tie  him down, wanting to scream, No more of your constrictions! I will escape from all of you!

  The blue-haired woman doesn’t know, she can’t know, and even if she could, she would never understand. No woman will understand, not ever. He wants her to know, he’ll scream if he doesn’t get away from her. She’ll never know; no woman will ever know.

  Men at the replacement depot on Okinawa—they would know. The two coastguardsmen on the Eberle, thrilled to be at sea again, they would know.

  Why should she panic him? It wasn’t even close to the silent hysteria he experienced his first day at the induction center at St. Louis, Missouri, surrounded by eighteen-year-olds like himself, all Ozark mountain boys he couldn’t understand, who looked at him with empty, bewildered eyes when he simply said, “Hello.” He’d almost deserted, fretting that his whole army experience would be like this, cast among men he couldn’t talk to.

  Then, a day later, Doug Proctor accosted him at the P.X. “Hello, I’m late of Washington University—“

  “In Washington?”

  “No, St. Louis.”

  “Of course, St. Louis. I’m late of U.C.L.A.”

  Bewildering loneliness vanishes. A brief weekend pass with Doug, lunch with his fraternity brothers before they ship to basic training, saved from the exclusive companionship of the mountain boys, he and Doug placed in the same infantry basic training battalion at Camp Joseph T. Robinson, Little Rock, Arkansas. Together on weekend passes—movies and pineapple sundaes at the U.S.O., never seeking women, avoiding dances, finding more joy in swank sit-down dinners at the hotel, with finger bowls. They don’t even talk about girls, sex never mentioned.

  He and Doug get separated when he enters the camp hospital with “bronchitis-possible pneumonia” no doubt caused from breathing the heavy coal smoke of the “expansion area” at the camp, banished for two weeks, then coming out to finish his training with another regiment. Doug is off to Officer’s Candidate School, Ft. Benning, Georgia.

  While in the “naso-pharingitis” ward, his training platoon commander—first lieutenant Ward Chapman, visits him. Dana pleads for him to get him out of the hospital and back with his buddies. “I’m going to miss finishing up with them!” “You mustn’t be in too big a hurry,” Chapman says, a plaintiff smile as if to say he’s been there—in combat, and he knows. Dana won’t see Doug again until he himself goes to Ft. Benning.

  Close beside the Chattahoochee
  by the Upatoi,
  stands our loyal alma mater
  Benning’s School for Boys.

  Doug visits him a week before he gets his commission. In this, his last conversation with him, Doug says he’s fed up with Truman and is bolting the Democrats for the Republican Party. The battle for Okinawa rages and Doug vanishes from his life forever. He will never know if Doug survived. Second Lieutenants, Infantry, were expendable.

  In the club car, Dana rises from his frozen position—the hell with it his six feet of thin, lanky frame hitting against the bolted down table, knee striking it, knocking over his drink. He flees, stopping between cars to breathe in the clammy air mixed with the salt smell of the sea and acrid coal smoke flushing through the open window of the vestibule. The sun is melting into the ocean, flaming red orb, distorted by a bank of gray fog far out to sea, moving inexorably toward them.

  Stumbling through two cars, reaching his window seat and falling into it, taking in—absorbing the passing slope of the coastline down to the sea, telephone lines rising and sinking, recalling another train ride—his first when he was ten, the Santa Fe down from L.A. to San Diego with his Charles Atlas muscle-bound Uncle Tom and older sisters, fascinated by the rising and undulating telegraph lines. How fast are we going, Uncle Tom?

  He’s had it with these old clunker trains belching smoke. When he goes to Michigan he’ll take the all-coach streamliner, Santa Fe’s El Capitan. He can’t afford the all sleeper-compartment luxury of the Super Chief—both trains he and his friends watched rolling up Marmion Way gorge past North Avenue Fifty in Highland Park, red blinking wig-wags announcing their approach minutes before they appear, as if rising out of the gully on a magic carpet—all the way to Chicago!—windows bright. What dreams the trains elicited! On their way to another world. Someday, and soon, the dream will become real.

  He looks out at sky enfolded in darkness; finds his way to his seat, falling into it. Forget about that harpy in the club car! He goes to the john to brush his teeth, take a leak and splash cold water on his face. Tomorrow morning . . . early, he hopes it will be a bright morning—rolling through the freight yards along San Fernando Road, probably; along North Figueroa, past the church where his sister Alice married Leno, past Chinatown . . . into the station. When he takes the El Capitan to Chicago, they’ll pass through Highland Park, over the Arroyo on the North Avenue Sixty-fourth street bridge—how exciting that will be!

  Finally the klunkety-klunk of rolling wheels lull him to sleep, The rails are sweeping him to one more destination—one he’s waited for two very long years.

  He sleeps deeply; he doesn’t dream, awakened by the call, “Los Angeles!  Check your luggage! Los Angeles!” rolling through the yards along San Fernando Road. Union Station now, walking on air, though his weighted duffel bag hangs heavily on his shoulder, double-timing from the train down through the long tunnel into the crowded, smoke-filled concourse—here at last, Los Angeles, Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de Porciúncula.

  Beyond, Michigan State and Mark Buchoz. . . he will have his adventure, nothing can stop him. But it will take another year to get it right.